Hello PicaJet Development Team! First of all, I'd like to aplogize for the length of this post. When I started using PicaJet a week ago, I began making a 'short' list of possible improvements and, well...the closer the program is to the perfect piece of software, the more I suggest things that in my mind would get it there. So anways, with that disclaimer, here's my post:

Thank you SOOO much for finally creating the image organizer that does everything all the other ones do and so much more. After trying Zoombrowser, Adobe Photoshop Album and Picasa, though liking parts of each, I always felt each one had things that the others didn’t, and even that all of them lacked a key organizational system that really made sense. After trying PicaJet FX for literally 5 minutes, I realized that I’d finally found my image organization software tool. It's so intuitive and I find myself saying, "I wonder if it can do thi...oh! sure enough! It can!" It seriously is the best image database organization software out there.

I also love making great software even better. So here's a list of things I think would be nice to include/fix in the order I'd like to see them (if possible):

-Provide an ‘undo’ for when you accidentally assign a category to an unknown number of pictures you didn’t intend to.

-Save the focus of a certain picture when switching sorting in location or categories (such as when using the ‘previous view’ history). If I’m assigning categories and accidentally select a category instead of expanding the subcategories, when I press the ‘back’ button (side note: a shortcut key for 'back'? maybe alt-left/right arrow keys?), I’d like the picture or particular date/location I was last viewing to also be navigated to in the middle pane. It’s a pain to have to remember where I was and go find it again. Also, I'd like it if I find a picture in date mode and want to quickly just see the other pictures in that folder, when I switch to locate by file location, if it didn't return me to the top of the picture list (like currently), but instead navigates to and highlights the specific folder the image is in and keeps that image visible (near the top) in the middle pane thumbnail collection.

-Have the option for normal ctrl-clicking for selecting multiple arbitrary files or to use a toggle selection method which would select any image you clicked and keep it selected (like someone’s constantly holding ctrl down). Sometimes I'll ctrl click 100+ scattered files and in my haste let up on the ctrl button too quickly on the last one and lose selection on all the images I had just selected.

-It'd be nice to have the option of applying all pending quickedit commands regardless if you have the pictures selected or not. If you've accidentally deselected a picture with a pending quickedit command—like a whole bunch of rotates--it's hard to go find them again. Maybe have a shortcut to apply quickedit commands (shift-ctrl-E? to prevent someone from accidentally hitting it, but it'd still be there). And it’d also be great to have the option of not seeing the 'this operation cannot be undone. Continue?' dialog on subsequent applications of quickedit commands...or maybe just for the duration that picajet session.

-Along a similar vein, it’d be nice to update all exif/iptc data for only those files that have had them changed. Right now, to make sure I get all categories updated in the IPTC keywords, I have to select ‘All files’, press Ctrl-A and then update exif/iptc data, but that takes a LOOONG time just to process the ones that haven’t been changed.

-I use a separate program to go through and change the EXIF picture taken date on files to account for time zone changes (it’s easier than constantly changing the camera time) but PicaJet doesn’t recognize the date change (reverting to original doesn’t help, even if I reimport it. I think it senses a duplicate and doesn’t relink). Does it keep a separate copy of all the exif data of all the pictures in the database file (this seems to be the case due to some disparities between certain EXIF/IPTC data reported in PicaJet and that reported by IrfanView)? If so, there should be an option to update it. That might help the renaming problem too (being that if a picture gets renamed outside, picajet doesn't recognize it and goes on pretending a picture with the old name still exists). Also, what date does picajet use to sort by? Picture taken, Original, or Digitized? Picture taken would be my preference (though I can change one date to another if PicaJet could re-recognize the date change)

-I might have missed something but I think it's currently not possible to be able to select all images in a folder along with all subfolders without ctrl clicking all the folders in question. It'd be nice to be able to select all pictures from a particular folder down. (alt-click?)

-I like the fact that the folder watch list can catch when images have been added, but if they've been renamed in an outside program, it'd be nice to have picajet not only recognize the new one but recognize the old one is gone.

-Make the preview mode match the default windows viewer behavior a little more (like scrolling forwards is 'zoom in' instead of 'zoom out'). Also, I think I might like the scroll wheel--without ctrl--to do the smart zooming (keeping the ctrl click-drag, too...that's cool) instead of picture navigation. I’ve always found the scroll wheel very handy to not only zoom, but kind of act as a lateral navigation tool on an image if it zooms in on where the cursor is located. I’d also include the arrow keys along with current PgUp and PgDn to navigate next/previous picture (also the behaviour of windows viewer and many other viewers).

-Enable navigation through pictures (forward and back) in a slideshow with the arrow and PgUp/PgDn buttons.

-Make ‘F’ (view fullscreen) also default to making the picture fullscreen (like the slideshow does), and have the fit to screen actually use the entire screen to fit to (/ and * seem to do the same thing in fullscreen mode, which is not to fit the image to the entire screen, but leaves a 1” border around the photo…at least for the images I was trying it on)

-Make an option to keep zoomed pictures 'smooth'/antialiased in preview mode (like currently), or leave it so that upon zooming in you'll be able to see individual pixels

-Change the zoom increment on the wheel to something non-linear so that the percieved zoom is a little closer to the same (something like 10 12 15 20 25 30 40 50 60 80 100 120 150 200, etc...). When zoom scrolling, it’s pretty quick to go from 20 to 200, but takes forever to go from 1000 to 4000%.

-Show total # of files in a folder when it's collapsed (including subfolders), but when it's expanded, show just the # of files in that main folder.

-A shortcut key to go back to browse mode from preview mode (like B?). It'd also be nice to include what the shortcut key is in the tip strip when you pause over a button (like slideshow being F12). You can see that in the menu, but it'd be nice to have the tip strip say ‘View Slideshow (F12)’

-It might be nice to beef up the help file. Unfortunately, while the help file is, well…helpful (mostly) it does read in a few places as though the writer’s first language might not be English. Many sentences could be made clearer and more informative. Most everything is intuitive, but every once in a while I’ll encounter something that I'd like to read up on. When I get an error saying ‘file is less than the import limit’ when I have the 'ignore less than' box unchecked, I try to search the help file it doesn't return anything. Same with searching for how transitions work in the slideshow, or trying to find out which of the many EXIF ‘dates’ picajet uses to categorize on. The data in the help file could also be split up a bit. It seems like really good advice on how to use the program is somewhat buried in a few pages, and in a few cases it’s hard to quickly find answers to specific questions. (though most questions I had I usually could figure out within 5-10 minutes) One good example is ‘category’ or ‘keyword’ should really have it’s own entry in the index tab. Instead, upon using the search feature, I found the material describing the clip icon in the ‘pieces of advice’ page. Probably an overall good page to read, but might not be somewhere someone looks if they have a very specific question they're looking for.

-Like other posters have indicated, include a manual sorting option. Logical place would probably be when photos are sorted without groups. There’s already a ‘no sorting’ option under the ‘arrange by’ in the right click menu. Seems ripe for including manual sorting. Alternatively, I don't know if it's actually used by some pictures, but there's a 'sequence number' field in the exif data that could be utilized to keep a manual sort so any rearranging could be kept within the file. If there were two identical sequence numbers, then (barring the use of fractional numbers like 1.5) it could default to date sorting.

That's it for now. Keep up the great work! I've been spreading the word and hopefully you'll get a few new clients!

I second the suggestion to have a way to show images that have changed and update their IPTC/EXIF data. Maybe along those lines provide an option to "Write Changes to IPTC/EXIF immediately" so you never have to know if the file has the latest info or not.

Another suggestion (and something that's blatently from Adobe Elements 3) is the ability to group/stack a set of images together, and only show a selected one. For example, If I have 10 very similar pictures of a flower, I could select all 10, and then "stack" the images, and only show the highest rated/chosen one (so they only take up the space of 1 thumbnail, with some indication that its stacked). Its nice because if you take a bunch of pictures of the same thing you can keep reduce the amount of workspace they take up, if they're mixed in with other pictures.

Oh, and one other small bug. When I double click on a thumbnail, most of the time there's a weird rendering bug that shows the thumbnail on the full view page after the screen has redrawn.